California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in Washington on Tuesday urged tech companies to “join us at the table” to craft federal legislation to crack down on online sex trafficking.

Becerra testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation in support of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. The bill would make internet companies liable for “knowing” that prostitution is being facilitated through content on their platforms.

The bill, which amends Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, has attracted bipartisan support in the Senate. But it has divided the tech community, with such companies as Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise supporting the legislation and many content providers such as Google opposing it.

“Let's first acknowledge there are so many stakeholders within the tech community that have stepped up and they're doing what they can,” Becerra told committee members. “But you have to have a concerted effort by all because it's so easy to hide in the corners.”

If internet companies don't like the bill, Becerra said, “someone then needs to give us what a better bill looks like.”

In a blog posted this month, Susan Molinari, Google's vice president for public policy, said the company agreed “with the intentions of the bill” but worried that the liability provisions would lead some content providers to simply stop looking for sex trafficking on their sites to avoid having “knowledge” of it.

“This would be a disaster,” Molinari wrote. “We think it's much better to foster an environment in which all technology companies can continue to clean their platforms and support effective tools for law enforcement and advocacy organizations to find and disrupt these networks.”

Google had floated alternative bill language that would have expanded trafficking victims' ability to sue, according to a report in Politico, but the amendments were rejected by the bill's sponsors.


Abigail Slater, General Counsel of the Internet Association, testifies before Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, during a hearing titled “S.1693, The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017, on Tuesday, September 19, 2017.

Representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter did not testify at Tuesday's hearing. Instead, the industry was represented by Abigail Slater, general counsel to the Internet Association, whose members include those three companies and other Silicon Valley giants.

The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, “is a well-intentioned response to a terrible situation,” Slater told members of the Senate panel. “Unfortunately, as currently drafted, SESTA introduces overly broad concepts of criminal and civil liability that create legal uncertainty and risk for legitimate actors.”

The bill's author, Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, said Tuesday that the legislation “is not the Anti-backpage.com Act of 2017.” But that online advertising site and its operators—investigated by Congress, state prosecutors and a federal grand jury—are clearly the main inspiration for the legislation, if not the actual target. Backpage.com stopped posting adult services ads in January, hours before company officials were scheduled to appear before a Senate hearing.

Critics have accused the site of accepting ads that help facilitate the trafficking of underage children. In October 2016, former California Attorney General Kamala Harris charged Backpage founder Carl Ferrer and two shareholders with running an “online brothel.” A Sacramento County judge dismissed the charges against the men in December, finding that the broad immunity of the federal Communications Decency Act shielded them from prosecution.

Harris later filed new criminal charges, including money laundering, against the men. In August, another Sacramento County judge allowed the money laundering charges to proceed but dismissed the pimping counts, finding that the Communications Decency Act “even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking.”

“Amending the 21-year-old Communications Decency Act is not a sin,” Becerra said. “Let's look at the CDA with fresh but experienced eyes.”